Random blog posts about research in political communication, how people learn or don't learn from the media, why it all matters -- plus other stuff that interests me. It's my blog, after all. I can do what I want.

Monday, July 25, 2016

Travel: My Local School System

In messing with some data, I got curious about travel costs in my local school system (Athens Clarke-County, Georgia). Who gets the travel bucks? The easy answer would be, of course, the superintendent, but in this case he's only a measly 6th place.

According to Fiscal Year 2015 date, here are the Top Ten Travelers in terms of buckaroos.

As you can see, school board members (at least some of them) travel. You have to for conferences and such, so let me be clear this isn't a criticism of travel of elected officials or staff. I travel sometimes as well on the state's dime, though not as often as some of my colleagues who see the world thanks to taxpayers. So for school board members one is #1 among all school employees/officials, there's another at #4, one at #10, and the rest come significantly later: #34, #188, #197, #206, #403 and #423.

It's kinda the same with principals. Some do a lot (ranked #2 overall) while some very little (ranked #423, which is a tie among lots of folks at $0.0 in travel).